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Debra Rienstra

liturgical year

The Problem with Palms

Let’s admit it: Palm Sunday is a problem. I know I shouldn’t be questioning a moment in the church calendar that goes all the way back to the third or fourth century, but why do I always vaguely dread this day?
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March 23, 2013
liturgical yearmemoirUncategorized

February Blahs

If for some reason you wish to study that peculiar state of human existence called “the blahs,” I suggest you begin in the third week of February in Michigan. It’s been winter for as long as we can remember here, and we still have a…
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February 23, 2013
liturgical yearspirituality

Thin Places

The Transfiguration story speaks to that part of us that longs for the mountain-top experience—for the epiphanic moment when, even for an instant, we perceive through the veil of clay to the numinous glory beyond. If only we could find a thin place, maybe we…
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February 9, 2013
cultural commentarypolitics

Doomed To Be a Taker

I really must apologize to the whole of society, since evidently I am a “taker.” I am a leech, a parasite, a moocher. This was certainly not my intention, but I missed some sort of memo and now I find myself in a category of…
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January 26, 2013
memoir

House Blessing

This week we had good news: a buyer for my parents’ home, after only thirty days on the market. A miracle. Mom signed the purchase agreement on Tuesday, and we’ll close by the end of the month. So now I must say good-bye to my…
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January 12, 2013
cultural commentary

Star of Wonder

The result of this for Chesterton was to see the whole world as astonishing, exactly because it might have been otherwise. Trees might have grown “tigers by the tail” instead of leaves. Eventually he gets to the idea that Someone made these choices about the…
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December 15, 2012